


Home

by Rainah (RainahFiclets)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Found Families, Multi, pretzel metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 21:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7950418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainahFiclets/pseuds/Rainah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home is a lot of things. It’s a place, it’s a person, it’s an action. More than that, it’s an idea: That somewhere out there is a place you can belong.</p><p>They find their home in different places, but they find it in each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oaxara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oaxara/gifts).



> A late birthday gift for my favourite person in the world, Oaxara. This is not my usual playground, but she loves all things Leverage so love, this is for you. Till my dying day. Unbeta'd (As it's, you know, _for_ my beta)

Hardison loves the city. He knows, logically, that not everyone does; while Parker doesn’t care much, Elliot is a country boy through and through. Hardison catches him glancing out the window all the time when they run cons, probably thinking longingly of the days he can ride horses, and let his hair blow in the breeze, and whatever else people do on ranches.

But Hardison? Has the city in his bones. This is where he belongs, among the digital landscape that makes up the thrumming heart of a city. So if Eliot needs the country, and Hardison could never live anywhere else but a city… it’s a problem. It precludes them from ever being anything more than casually together.

Then they do get together; with Parker, too. And Hardison is terrified. He tries to negotiate, to make Eliot see he’s wrong to snarl _I hate the city. Everything in it is dead or dying._

“You think it’s dead? Look man. Open your eyes.”

There’s nature here, Eliot’s precious nature. Spiders and squirrels and so many pigeons. Parks and weeds that grow through the cracks in the sidewalk. Eliot should like the nature here - it’s tough, just like him. But that’s not the part that Hardison likes.

The city is possibility. It’s towering skyscrapers full of people that are sure, if they just work a little harder or a little smarter, they can get ahead. The streets are full of businessmen on their way to make deals, actors rushing off to auditions, couples walking one another home after a successful first date. It’s a playground full of hopes and dreams and fears that dance like marionettes to his fingers across the keys of a laptop. 

It was the city that welcomed him as a child, wide-eyed and scared, when he was first delivered to his Nana. It was the city that became his home, even more so than the computers that became his future.

So Hardison loves the city. Eliot loves the country. Parker doesn’t care where she lives as long as she can keep stealing things (Which you’d think would necessitate a city, but you would be wrong. There is just as much crime in small towns, if not more).

So when they all finally get together, it’s a question that preys on Hardison’s mind. He doesn’t quite know how to say _I love you, but I want to stay here. I need to stay here._

Bless Parker for being the one to bring it up, in the way only Parker can. “Are we moving in with Hardison?” She says one day, as they cluster around to eat whatever delicacy Eliot cooked today.

Hardison looks at her, then at Eliot. They’re both looking at him. “You can,” he says finally. And then, so they don’t think he’s about to force them to talk about feelings, he adds “provided you don’t interrupt my computer time.”

“We won’t,” Parker promises gravely.

“Parker,” Eliot says, “Do you want to move in with Hardison?”

“Of course!” She beams. “He has all the best toys.”

Hardison chokes on his soda; even Eliot grins. “Then we will,” he says simply. “Is next weekend ok with you Hardison?”

“Sure.” And it happens, just like that. They buy a truly massive bed, move Eliots gym to the basement and Parker’s ropes to the attic. And just like that he’s moved in with the people he loves.

He finds himself alone with Eliot one day - Parker likes them around, sure, but she also keeps her warehouse of a home so she has a place to retreat to. They don’t begrudge her that. And Hardison has to ask.

“I thought you might want to move somewhere else, now that things are as they are.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Because the country’s your home,” Hardison says. “The tumbleweeds and the horses and the cowboy hats.”

“No,” Eliot says it softly, but there’s an edge of iron underneath. “The city is _your_ home. My home is with you two.”

And that is that.

 

Eliot doesn’t give a damn where he lives, or where he works. Pakistan, Boston, it’s all the same. Cities filled with people going about their business and dusty, small towns where the very air seemed heavy with expectation. He likes the things he can do in some places better than others, likes situations he’s found himself in better than others. But home?

Isn’t a place. It’s people. And he knows, deep in his bones, the importance of making sure your people are good people.

Damien used to be his people. Damien, with his slick suits and his loose morals. Damien, who asked him to do unspeakable things and smiled contentedly while he did them. It’s been years and Eliot still wakes up in a cold sweat when he dreams about those days. 

On those nights he reaches across the bed to run his fingers over Hardison’s skin or Parker’s hair, a grounding reminder that he doesn’t belong to Damien Moreau anymore. It’s a small piece of comfort, if not enough to wash away the stains of what he’s done while leashed to that man.

For a long time, Eliot would tell people that he worked alone. One time jobs only, no attachments no repeats. If loneliness was the price of not further sullying his soul, it’s a price he’d gladly pay. He hadn’t considered that maybe there were people out there who would want him for more than what he was capable of breaking. 

Then there was Nate, and then there was Hardison and Parker. They aren’t interested in him breaking anything. They’re interested in what he can _save_. He is their protector, and in that he finds a new kind of freedom. Life is narrowed down to a few simple truths:

He would die for them, but they will not ask him to. In fact, they make us promise not to. With their words (“Don’t you dare die on me, man, I need you to teach me how to do the kung fu thing”) and their care and the fevered pitch of their kisses every time he comes in with a new wound.

He would kill for them, but they will not ask him to. Instead, they ask him to cook for them. They ask him to teach them. They ask him to help them make the world a better place rather than a worse one.

He would be anything for them, probably. And he has - a baseball player, a doctor, a goon. But at the end of the day, all they really want is for him to be himself. It’s scary. And vaguely uncomfortable. And just a little bit thrilling.

One day he says, “I’ve had people before, but nothing like this.”

Parker is forever blunt. “You’ve never had people who deserve you before.”

“Or your cooking.” Hardison kisses his shoulder, pulling Eliot back into the softness of their bed.

When he says “Till my dying day,” there’s nothing he means more. They’re his family, his home, and he never wants anything else.

 

To Parker, home is in the things you do. She can listen to Hardison talk all he wants about how much he loves Portland, or the way Elliot treasures those who he thinks of as _his people_.

It doesn’t matter. She lost _her people_ when she was too young to even know what that meant.

For the longest time Parker thought she didn’t have a home. That she never would. She loves Hardison and Eliot, sure, and her life would be much duller without Nate and Sophie around. They’re her crew, and she wants them with her.

But it’s not home. It’s not the feeling Hardison describes, or the way Eliot’s eyes light up when they walk in the door. She couldn’t find that if she tried.

(And she wasn’t trying, really, she didn’t care. Homes were not necessary to run cons.)

And then a con runs south. “We need to lay low,” Nate tells the crew. “No running cons. No hacking, no hitting, no pickpocketing, for at least two weeks. Let this blow over. We’ll form up in two weeks and go from there.”

Two weeks without pickpocketing. She can do that.

Except she can’t, she really can’t. Every person she walks by, her mind flashes immediately to analyze what’s in their pockets. Her fingers itch to dive in and see if she’s right. The fact that she can’t is going to drive her insane - if the silence from where her com should be doesn’t do the job first.

It took less than a week before she was slipping into Hardison’s window, frustrated, sullen, and somehow heartsick.

“Thought I’d be seeing you here,” is all he says.

She fixes him with a stare, the kind he was always telling her was off-putting. “I need to steal things. Give me things to steal.” 

“Nate’s orders.” His mouth twists unhappily. She makes a small huff of disappointment, one that makes him smile. “I know. Stealing’s a part of you.”

No it wasn’t. It’s something she does. “I’m good at it,” she tells Hardison, if only for something to say. She’s learned that when people talk you are expected to reply to them.

“More than that,” He shakes his head. “When do you feel most alive?”

“Stealing.”

“And,” he continues, “When do you feel most at peace?”

That’s easy. “Stealing.” 

“When you’re feeling overwhelmed,” Hardison says, “What do you do?”

“I steal things.” Diamonds, mostly. Stealing diamonds always brought her back to herself. Kind of like-

Kind of like feeling at home.

Her eyes flash up to Hardison, shocked. He smiles. “There it is. Come on love, let’s go bug Eliot until he agrees to make us supper.”

“That’s not hard, he makes us supper every day,” Parker says matter-of-factly.

“Yes,” Hardison takes her hand, “But we’re going to persuade him to make us _pizza_ for supper.”

She grins, delighted at the idea. “I love pizza.”

“And pretzels?”

“And pretzels. The sweet kind and the salty kind.” She grins again, ponytail hitting him in the face as she does an about-face and heads off the find Eliot.

“Parker!” He starts after her. “Which one am I? The sweet or- you know what? Nevermind. I don’t want to know. You tell him I want pepperoni on my pizza!”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are, as always, loved  
> Come find me on tumblr [here](http://thellamaduo.tumblr.com/)


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